The Shared Experience of a One-Page Strategic Plan & Scaling Up

At a cer­tain point, com­pa­nies need bet­ter tools to man­age their growth and adopt some sort of man­age­ment sys­tem. Oth­er­wise, it just gets too messy when there’s so much going on.

In the third of our four-part series of blogs about the growth of CDN Con­trols, CEO/­co-founder Dean Fras­er talks about how their choice of the Scal­ing Up frame­work and how it made all the difference. 

Fras­er admits that, in the ear­ly days of their com­pa­ny, he and his part­ner used to hold their cards pret­ty close.

But, as they con­tin­ued to grow to solve more prob­lems for their clients, and took on big­ger projects, they need­ed to scale rapidly.

So, they reached out to Lawrence & Co. to build a cohe­sive, high­ly effec­tive growth strat­e­gy and pro­vide the per­spec­tive and exter­nal insight need­ed to unleash CDN’s growth to its full potential.

Account­abil­i­ty of the One-Page Strate­gic Plan

The first step was the cre­ation of a One-Page Strate­gic Plan (OPSP), the core tool of Scal­ing Up 2.0, to clar­i­fy their goals.

It’s the best tool we’ve found to suc­cinct­ly and sus­tain­ably focus on what mat­ters most, and:

• To align the exec­u­tive team and, ide­al­ly, the entire com­pa­ny around a long-term vision
• To make sure that you accom­plish what is need­ed to enhance your com­pet­i­tive advan­tage, oper­a­tional excel­lence and growth
• To be clear about what needs to be exe­cut­ed, aligned with your strat­e­gy, on an annu­al and quar­ter­ly basis to achieve growth tar­gets and become more capable.

“If every­one isn’t pulling on the same rope,” says Fras­er, ​“we can’t get there. It won’t work. We need every­body work­ing togeth­er as a team, func­tion­ing well and doing what they say they’re going to do. It’s huge. There are no excus­es. Peo­ple know because their com­mit­ments are so clear.” Frasers talk about the OPSP here.

A Frame­work for Growth

After imple­ment­ing the Scal­ing Up frame­work, the ben­e­fits were immediate.

“It was a spring­board for us, says Fras­er. ​“Once you share every­thing (with the team), oth­ers can see the vision and buy in…and every­thing fun­neled to a com­mon goal.

With the team dialled in, they could choose their own goals (called Rocks in the Scal­ing Up Method­ol­o­gy) and KPIs and fol­low a weekly/​monthly/​annual cadence to hit those targets.

“It kept us on track. Before, it was kind of pie in the sky. Even though we were still grow­ing and doing amaz­ing things, we did­n’t have the road map laid out to get us where we want­ed to be. It’s awe­some.” Fras­er talks about the ben­e­fits of Scal­ing Up here, and imple­ment­ing Scal­ing Up below.

Want to hear more? Here is the link to our recent CDN Case Study and watch the full inter­view with Fras­er below.

Oth­er Blogs

• Ben­e­fits of The One-Page Strate­gic Plan: Sim­plic­i­ty Scales & Focus Dri­ves Results
• Set­ting Stretch Tar­gets and How They Can Backfire
• Learn From Oth­ers & Set the Stage for Success
• Let the Right Num­bers Tell the Story

Old­er Podcasts

• Com­mon Ques­tions & Answers About Scal­ing Up
• Pit­falls of Scal­ing Your Business